Fence Not Finished

The fence project has become a comedy of errors.  The start was postponed three times.  The wood came but no workers.  Worker is sick.

Then a worker showed up and dug the post holes.  Has the fence really begun?

Next day -- cement for posts put in.  Posts placed.  Work done for the day.

Friday worker completed half the fence but quit early -- not feeling well.

Today is Saturday -- no work until Monday. 

What really gripes me is that I have had to get up early in case a worker showed up.   I want to sleep in!  Tomorrow is Sunday and I'm betting they won't work on Sunday so I intend to have my much desired sleep-in.  

Aside from the irritation of the fence, the days are beautiful -- lots of sun on the ripe berries of the mountain ash, golden rod still looking nice, sun really warm.  Just saw a downy woodpecker on the crab apple tree.

Colchicums are blooming.  They always surprise me.  No leaves, weak-looking stem-like stalks emerging into showy mauve and white flowers.   The flowers are the reason I leave the awkward-looking leaves in spring.  By July, the leaves have disappeared and I have usually forgotten about them. And then they surprise me again with their autumn show.   

A Feel-Good Day

 I've decided to feel happier a little bit each day and to expand the feeling week by week.

Today I took a wee break from my loneliness as stood outside with the October sun at my back.  I let the sun enter my body and warm a small space in my heart.   The "I wants" and the "I shoulds" were pushed aside for a couple of minutes.  Looking at the plants softened and loosened the tension in my chest. I could breathe more deeply.  What a freeing feeling.

Asters are blooming like mad.  Shrubs look healthy and green.  Wasps are busy looking for what:  -- summer sap? lingering bugs? available eggs?

Everything is quiet on my street. The children are in school and their parents have left for work.  There's just me, a gentle breeze, and autumn sun.  

The lumber has arrived for the new section of fencing.  The posts of the old section rotted out this summer and a replacement is in the works.  The old fence is torn down and taken to the dump.  The new section will be up before the day is done--I hope! 

 

Time Goes By So Slowly

 It seems only yesterday when Mike passed.  Has it really been almost two years?  I purchased a winter bouquet saddle for the gravestone and that opened up a mass of memories.

One would think that my grief would begin to wane now, but it's still fresh.  I don't want to die, but I do. Talking to the pictures every day really doesn't help with my healing, I'm thinking.  But I don't want to take them down.  Not just yet -- maybe never.

I am beginning a major cleaning out now.  I will discard something every week.  After my fall last week, I realize that I will not be able to handle the house and live on my own for ever.  I'm going to have to consider assisted living sometime.  But the house is full of things Mike and I collected through the years.  It is time for someone else to love them.

I have mentioned to Kelly that she may want to look over what is in each room --  slowly of course -- so that I have a firm idea about what has to go.   She's so nice and doesn't want to think of the idea just yet. 

Lately, I've been wondering what shape I will have when I pass out of this time and space.  I don't think I'll become a little green man!  Will I have a body or just be a mind?  I'm beginning to think of death as a moult where I leave this body and at last return to my real self.   A butterfly analogy.  

I'm nearly 85 for goodness sakes!  Is there still something I am supposed to do or realize or experience before I pass?  I'm still hale and healthy -- not really death material yet. What a mystery the end times are!  Each day brings something different.

This year the maple trees have succumbed to something and have been dropping dried and tar-spotted leaves. The street maples are almost bare. They won't be giving us any autumn glory this year.  Is this a sign of climate change?  The earth is going through great changes right before our eyes.  

 

Filling In Time

 Sometimes I awake in the morning and think, "What's the use of getting up."  Geordie is not here and living is meaningless without him.

Imagine --  it's been a year and a half since he passed and I still cry.  I try to busy myself with things and find myself stopping in the middle of a job or an activity and giving it up.  I tell myself that I should be getting over Geordie's passing, but it's just as fresh and sore as it was last year. 

I wrote about the picture I had, but haven't told you I have a "Geordie wall" with five pictures of him hanging on the wall down the hall.  When I pass the them in the morning or at bedtime, I talk to each picture.  Sort of a sick routine. 

My "garden" is a mess.  Along the side where the fence will be replaced is full of Physalis (Chinese Lantern) and Virginia creeper waiting for me to pull them.  Virginia Creeper is a tyrant creeping low and close to the fence and popping up in unexpected places.

The Trump Vine that I planted so many years ago and dug out when it began to creep is still in my back neighbour's yard untended and allowed to grow where it will.  And it wills to come back into my yard via the back fence or underground right into my gardens. It can travel underground for several feet and then show itself  and grow vigourously where I don't want it.

 It's been too hot for me to weed this week. That's my latest excuse.   My days just pass.  I eat at prescribed eating times and sleep in the afternoon. I go in for a visit with Kirk and Kelly every afternoon just before supper and stay for supper for 3 meals a week.  Cooking for one is difficult.  I stick to easy things like peanut butter sandwiches or scrambled eggs.  The meals I have next door I pay for -- only $40 a week, but I don't eat much.

Because of the daily visits, I keep myself clean with regular showers and laundry washing.  The routines make me do something that I probably wouldn't do otherwise.  I tell myself Geordie wouldn't like the rut I've gotten myself into, but he's in a non-judgmental place just waiting for me to finish up this living requirement. 

Well this had been a downer of a bog note, hasn't it!  Perhaps I'll feel better next week. 

Happy by Design

 It's been six months since Geordie died, and I am still looking for a happy day.  Have decided to manufacture happiness. 

I'm happy that I contracted with another gardening group to clear the overgrown weeds growing where the old pond was.

I'm happy that I let a burdock plant grow so I could see what it was like in maturity.

I'm happy that there are two big clumps of goldenrod in the old pond area.  They are lovely and showy, 6-foot high specimens as long as you remember not to notice the plants they have overtaken. 

I'm happy that the worker didn't do a perfect job weed-whacking the path.  Now I have a small, manageable areas to whipper-snip instead of one large one.

I'm happy that I sprained my hip.  Now I have a good excuse for not doing much for days and days.

I'm happy that I put the pictures of Mike on the hall wall.  Now I can see him and talk to him as I pass going from room to room.

I'm happy that I'm learning not to care who judges me.  It's nice being a solitary person. 

There are so many things to be happy about that I can almost give up being sad. 

 

Just Like Me

 A quote from Hila Colman: "She felt tears dripping down her cheeks, and she wondered if anyone would ever miss her if she simply sat here, drinking coffee for days and days, years and years."

And that's about it -- even though my daughter lives just next door and drops in to make sure I'm all right, I feel alone.  And I want to be alone.  Kelly is so kind and will do just about anything to ensure that I am happy, but only I can make me happy. 

It's hot , never the less I intend to work in the garden this afternoon.  The morning glories need to be planted -- the over-wintering ones are just starting.

The green growth in the stone walkway is ankle high and needs attending to.  I will weed-whack some this afternoon.  "Small, achievable goals." 

Still Missing Him

Friends tell me that time will reduce the pain.  It's been 5 months and still I cry.  When will I be able to have a whole day without tears.  I am trying to stay busy but loneliness overwhelms me without warning.  It catches in my throat and then the tears come.

Days fold into nights and into days again.  Time goes by but the pain persists.   Maybe tomorrow will be better.  I have a lovely picture of him in the hallway.  Whenever I pass it, I speak to him and beg him to answer.  Imagine talking to a picture on the wall!

If anyone else talked like this, I would've told them to get over it.  Is this intense grief another learning experience?  Today's lesson:  don't judge until you've experienced it.  I'm 83 for goodness sakes and still having lessons on being human.  

Mike Died

I want to write a piece about my feelings and my experience but right now as soon as I begin to write, I get all snively and  can't see the keyboard.  Perhaps I can finish the article next week

More To Do

 

I let my gardens go fallow this year – partially because I couldn’t bring myself to garden and somewhat to see what would grow without attention.

Now into July, the garden is a mass of weeds.  Garlic mustard is holding sway in the apple tree bed.  I really intend to pull it our before it takes over from the Trilliums.  The Solomon’s Seal in that same bed needs cutting back.  The hostas are lush.  Echinacea is blooming despite the lack of care. Goldenrod has reseeded itself all over. The glorious red Daylily has spread and is blooming like mad.  Rudbeckia is popping up both in the back and the front yards.  In the veggie beds, quack grass is in a race to cover any tiny veggies that the squirrels haven’t dug up or the rabbit hasn’t bitten off.

The pond remnants are almost gone. What’s left is a fairly large hole with two or three very large boulders and three plastic boxes full of water put there to take up space in the stream iteration of the pond. Also exposed from the former pond/stream is quite a bit of rubber pond liner and the cushion liner underneath it.  I need a knife that will cut through the exposed liner.  I’m thinking that the knives that carpet layers use might be the knife to use on the liner.  Maybe Home Hardware or Irvine Home Decorating would have such a tool.

Taking out the three basket-like plant boxes is a bigger problem.  I’m thinking that the contractor that reduced the pond to a stream used them  as filler. They are full of old water and some stones and are very heavy,  It will take some work to get them out.

Those plastic baskets and the two very large boulders still in the hole are all that I intend to take out now.  Those jobs and the task of cutting out any exposed liner will end the job of clearing out the old pond.  When they are done, I can then move the earth from the high point of the former pond out over the garden to make one large fairly level planting area..

In my dreams of redoing the space of the former pond, I see an area with some large boulders and some smaller river rocks spread haphazardly over the area with little patches of Sedum Acre growing among them.  I thought it would take about a year to accomplish this.   Now I’m looking at over two years.  I always think that I can find a happy worker to help, but I’ve not found a worker willing to tackle the job.

Pond Rocks

 

I definitely need some rock management.   I have many rocks from our old pond to find homes for. The pond was raised at the back to allow us to have waterfalls and lined from bottom to top with large rocks and boulders and surrounded by more boulders.  (Is there a difference?) That wondrous pond had to go when the great-grandchildren arrived next door.  We pulled as many rocks and the liner as we could near the pump to make a reservoir and turned the pond into a stream lined with rocks and with two waterfalls.  The children were safer and the birds loved it.

Last year we decided to demolish the stream when Michael was unable to tend to the intricacies of a pump and the ubiquitous leaks. We were left with many big rocks and some river rocks.  Many of the rocks are in that reservoir area and the wall section we made to raise the garden level high enough for a waterfall.  I advertised last year that I was giving away some rocks with pond experience and got rid of quite a few especially those rocks surrounding the stream and leftover wall from the old pond,  but there are still some hidden deep in the bed of the old pond.  Where to put them is a problem. Some of them will just have to stay there.  I’ll use a crowbar to punch holes into the old lining to allow some drainage and let that be it.

Living with Wildlife

Now I sympathize with my friends who look for help in discouraging deer.  Those are my lucky friends who live outside the city.   I'm a city person

At one time, I was enamored of wildlife in the city:  squirrels, chipmunks, skunks, rabbits, but now that I am trying to grow food in my garden, I look at such wildlife visitors as pests rather than guests.  Each year at seed time, the battle is on.  There is no way I can teach my wildlife that what is growing in the boxes is not for them. 

This year I covered the rows of beans with plastic mesh but the mesh was not wide enough for the bed.  Putting two rows of mesh down just left a thin opening and squirrels and chipmunk shimmied between the layers.  The pests found a fun way to get to the beans.  Imagine== a game with as many beans as you can eat as a prize!  A complete planting disappeared overnight. 

When the Gardener Goes

 

I didn’t garden much at all this season.  Life kept me extra busy in spring and early summer.  I managed to do a few pots and plant some seeds and that's about it.  Later in the summer when I did have time, the garden had frankly gotten away from me.  So my garden looked after itself this year.

Some good things happened:  the coneflowers and rudbeckias spread out and made a grand show from July to September, the morning glories growing from seeds from last year's plants were super  from mid August on although the colour reverted to the species purple, the geraniums in the pots outdid themselves, the bit of chasmanthium we left at the front had its best show yet, and the huge hosta ‘Sum and Substance’ is magnificent. 

Some bad things happened:  I didn’t attend to the rascally trumpet vine and am going to have a real fight on my hands next spring.  The squirrels decimated the plants in pots -- especially the sweet potato vines.  Yellow sorrel shot up between the pads of the prickly pear!  Several hostas have overgrown their spots.  And most annoying, Creeping Campanula has invaded the front.

What amazed me the most is how fast nature will take over a patch.  In just one season, my garden looks like I moved away and left it. 

Is that what happens when the gardener dies?